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tv   Full Court Press  Current  November 29, 2012 3:00am-6:00am PST

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[ ♪ theme ♪ ] [ ♪ theme ♪ ] >> bill: good morning friends and neighbors and welcome to the "full court press" this thursday morning, november 29. great to see you today. thank you for joining us here on the "full court press" as we tackle the big stories of the day here in our nation's capital, around the country and around the globe and give you a chance to sound off. tell us what these issues mean to you at 1-866-55-press. boy, president obama has an interesting guest for lunch today at the white house.
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none other than mitt romney himself. tagg, by the way was not invited. there will be no reporters or no photographs allowed either and of course, no alcohol. the white house would not say what their luncheon agenda is but they did release the luncheon menu. mitt romney will be served a healthy helping of crow. and it's about time. all right. we'll talk about that and a whole lot more here. a lot more serious stuff here on the "full court press" this morning. first, standing by with all of the latest, lisa ferguson out in los angeles. hi lisa. good morning. >> hey bill. good morning everyone. the president does have quite an interesting schedule with his lunch guest but first off he's meeting with the american nobel prize winners in the oval office and then as bill mentioned he is inviting mitt romney to lunch in the private dining room. bill is not the only one making jokes about what's on the menu. new york daily news said no sour grapes. politico's headline reads friendship not on today's menu
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but here's what today is really about. presidential aides are saying the lunch should help president obama politically by showing he's willing to reach out to republicans in order to avoid the fiscal cliff. president obama first invited romney on election night when romney called to concede and the romney adviser said it is very gracious and the right thing to do. no aides will be present at today's meeting. the two will speak one on one. even though the two parties are saying they are willing to reach across the aisle during fiscal cliff negotiations, we're not seeing much in terms of a deal. the latest roadblock is the cost of federal retirement programs. republicans are staying is up to the president to cut back on medicare medicaid and social security but democrats want entitlement programs completely off the table. today, the white house is sending treasury secretary timothy geithner and congressional negotiator rob neighbor to capitol hill where they will lay out their proposal
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with speaker boehner. more bill press is coming up after the break. as always, we're live in our chat room and would love to see you there. current.com/billpress. we're right back. you're about to watch a viewer created ad message for little caesars who proudly salutes unites states veterans everywhere. >> hi, i'm rick loz. i joined the united states air force in 1987. as i was leaving the service i went into a civilian career for a little bit but i was looking for a little bit more than what the civilian career had to offer me and that's when learned about the little caesars veterans program. the little caesars veterans program helps the veterans transition to civilian life. they give them credits and discounts on the things that they are going to need to help open a new store. it was a program that they were just starting to kick off and i got the honor of being the very first veteran.
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i have three kids and boy, they were very happy to help out. i had one as a cashier, one worked a some of the other stations making pizza in the back. they really enjoyed owning a franchise. one of the other great benefits about owning your own franchise is you can determine how big you want to make it. i started out with one store, i currently have four and i have the opportunity if i so desire to expand beyond that. one of the great things about being one of the first veterans program, i had the opportunity to talk to a lot of veterans. i know a couple of them personally and they now own a store or two so it's really been a great thing for me and i think that's it's been a great program for little caesars.
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[ ♪ theme ♪ ] >> announcer: broadcasting >> announcer: broadcasting across the nation on your radio and on current tv, this is the "bill press show." >> bill: president obama inviting mitt romney to lunch. wouldn't you love to be a fly on the wall? tagg not invited by the way. >> no? >> bill: the secret service banned tagg from the lunch. good morning everybody. it is thursday.
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thursday november 29. great to see you today. and thank you for joining us. it is the "full court press" here this thursday morning. where we just survey all the big stories of the day. wherever the news is happening. we're here in our nation's capital. a lot of news out of the nation's capital today. more senators dumping on susan rice yesterday. president obama with a big kind of pep rally at the white house to push those tax cuts for the middle class and republicans on capitol hill saying no, no, no, we hate the middle class. come on. let's give tax cuts to the rich! the millionaires and the billionaires, to the koch brothers and donald trump. we'll bring you up to date and give you a chance to sound off on the issues which i know you can't wait to do. you can do it by giving us a call at 1-866-55-press. you can join the conversation on twitter at bpshow on facebook, facebook.com/billpressshow. and if you really want to get into it with your fellow "full
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court pressers," go into the chat room. try it out. it is a lot of fun. go to current.com and click on the chat room and you are in! here we are. lucky day. thursday november 29 for somebody. >> it wasn't that lucky. you're still here. peter ogborn and dan henning good morning guys. leading team press with phil backert and cyprian bowlding. cyprian and i had our powerball tickets. we were ready, we were there watching as they came rolling -- uh-oh, dan's got his too? >> oh, yeah. >> bill: rolling down the aisle. you've got a lot. >> i buy them on individual slips. i bought one two -- i bought five. >> bill: so did i. cyprian did too. i have as good a chance with quick pick having the machine pick them. >> there's no advantage to picking your own numbers. >> bill: no?
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>> uh-huh. it is complete superstition. >> of course it is superstition but it is not like there is a science to winning the lottery. >> you don't get a better chance by doing quick pick. >> bill: let's hear the numbers here. i want to check here. okay. >> the number five. next up is number 23. here is a picture of ricky la grange from louisiana. he won $1 million. after that, we've got the number 22. round it out tonight with the number 29. all right now for tonight's winning powerball number and for that over half a billion jackpot, it is the number 6. cyprian. >> bill: i had a 22 somewhere and a 29 somewhere. if i could put them together. cyprian got the powerball number. >> bill: he got some dough. >> a couple of bucks. >> if you just hit the powerball, it is $2 i think. >> bill: so there were winners
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in arizona and missouri. red states. this is not fair. it is a conspiracy. >> that's not change we can believe in. >> bill: did you get anything at all? >> no. i'm going to double check later. i just go to the counter and scan them. >> bill: i'll never play powerball again. >> you're lying through your teeth. you'll never play powerball again. you know you don't mean that. you know how many tickets i bought? zero. i did just as well as you suckers. >> bill: yeah, but you didn't have all of the fun. there we go. speaking of fun senator chris kuhns will be in studio. we're joined also by randy weingarten head of the american federation of teaches and olympia knox from yahoo news. and president obama saying
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dammit get's start out by giving 98% of americans a tax cut. what's wrong with that. but first -- >> this is the "full court press." >> even if you didn't win the grand prize in last night's powerball jackpot, you should double check your ticket and see if you won a smaller prize. a lot of people don't do that. they rip up their ticket after they see they didn't win the $500 million. according to the association, of the $40 billion in prizes awarded in the u.s. each year, $800 million go completely uncollected. >> no kidding. >> bill: oh, my god. >> what happens to that money? >> no one picks them up. >> most lotteries give you six months 180 days to pick it up and i think it goes back into the fund of that state lottery benefits whether it is education or schools. >> that's not all bad. don't just let money go. >> nfl star is still awaiting for his date on the basketball court with president obama. washington redskins sensation
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quarterback robert griffin iii tells yahoo news he challenged the president to a game of pickup last year but the president said he would only play if rgiii would be on his team. he hopes to meet him on the court soon. >> bill: i'll bet you they'll be playing soon. >> he should have him over. rgiii is the hottest thing in sports right now. >> plenty of complaints about airline food. one airline trying something new. taking something it knows a lot of people love and putting it in the air. kentucky fried chicken. hop on any japan flight and you'll be able to enjoy kfc in flight. they're trying it first as a promotion for the holidays. if it stays popular they'll keep it up. >> bill: that's just what i missed when i was flying to istanbul, a bucket of kfc. >> the first person i sit down next to on an airplane that's gnawing on a chicken bone, i'm going to shove that bone down their throat! >> bill: how many bucket -- tickets do they think they're
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going to sell because of kfc. this is another male model day. i forgot to put my scarf on. this is one of the beautiful carol press scarves. >> i really like that one. >> bill: they are available. these are hand-woven scarves by carol press. they're available if you go to billpressshow.com. perfect christmas present and they're very warm. rayon chenille. i forgot to put it on at the top of the hour. i have an e-mail from carol saying "where's your scarf"? yes, boss. >> yes, ma'am! >> bill: president obama he started his campaign, kicked off his campaign yesterday. for the middle class tax cuts down at the white house. i was there. he brought a group of -- there were 15 middle class americans who had been in touch with him in the white house. supporting the middle class tax cuts. this is the bill that has
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already passed -- by the way it's really -- we call it tax cuts for the 98% of americans but it is really a tax cut for 100% of americans because it says that the rate for all americans up to $250,000 will stay the same. that tax cut will continue. as the president pointed out that, bill has already passed the senate. it is in the house. democrats in the house are ready to vote for it. they just need a few republicans and they need john boehner to bring it up for a vote. as the president says, i'll play you some clips here in a second, he made a very, very strong case, i think. he said look at these average americans behind us. everybody agrees we should not raise tax cuts on the middle class right now. so if everybody agrees, let's just damn do it! here's president obama saying this should be our first priority. >> obama: let's keep middle class taxes low. that's what our economy needs. that's what the american people deserve.
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>> bill: you'll see some photos of this event yesterday at the white house up on our web site at billpressshow.com. again, the president pointed out it's passed the senate. get it through the house. he's got his pen ready to go. >> obama: democrats in the house are ready to vote for that same bill today. if we can get a few house republicans to agree as well, i'll sign this bill as soon as congress sends it my way. i gotta repeat, i've got a pen. i'm ready to sign it. >> bill: he held up his pen. i've got a pen. he says a few house republicans that's right, you don't need that many but you need to bring it up for a vote. boehner won't do it. why won't boehner do it because boehner says that still says -- he's just dead ass wrong he still says that raising taxes on the wealthiest of americans on the 2% would cost -- would kill
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jobs and kill the economy and we know from the eight years under bill clinton proven just the opposite. in the eight years under george bush proven when you do give tax cuts to the rich, the economy doesn't soar, it sinks. president obama finally part of their campaign yesterday always very clever. obama operation. they came up with a way for all americans to be able to sound off on this issue. he noted that if the tax cuts on the middle class on the 98% do go up, middle class americans will pay $2,000 more in taxes every year. that means $2,000 out of your pocket so the president's asking people to tell members of congress what that -- what you could do with that $2,000. what that $2,000 would mean to you and they're sending -- asking people to send their
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stories to their member of congress. republican or democrat or to their united states senators and they've done so by coming up with a twitter hash tag. it's hash tag my 2k. president obama announcing it. >> obama: tell members of commerce what a $2,000 tax hike would mean to you. call your members of congress. write them an e-mail. post it on their facebook walls. you can tweet it. using the hash tag my 2k. not y2k. [ laughter ] my 2k. >> we figured that would make it easier to remember. >> bill: my 2k. we're tweeting it out ourselves. you should use it. we've got a photo up on the web site of the white house briefing yesterday. where jay carney had a screen in back of him with that hash tag my2k.
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use it today. and you know, $2,000 for most americans is a good chunk of change. extra money in the pocket. particularly right now at the holidays but i mean this will kick in next year. but that's $2,000 as the president said yesterday, you can use to buy clothes for the kids, put food on the table to maybe extend your vacation a little bit. at this time, there was a baby that cried in the crowd yesterday and he said you can use that to buy diapers for the baby. picture up right on it. >> $2,000 is a lot of money. >> bill: for most americans. for the koch brothers, they wouldn't even think about it. >> they spend that on lunch. >> bill: donald trump no. this is for average americans. so what the republicans are saying really is we are willing to steal $2,000 from the pockets of every american family unless
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president obama is willing to give the millionaires and billionaires another tax cut. that is just disgusting. i don't know how they can stand on that principle and expect to survive as a party. so my question to you this morning is very simple. let's start it right here. let's do our own little campaign. my2k, what does that 2k mean to you? is it so little money you wouldn't notice it or would it make a real difference? how would it make a difference in your life? what could you do with it? how important is it to you? let us know and we'll send those along to members of congress. 1-866-55-press. my 2k. what does your 2k mean to you here on the "full court press" thursday morning november 29. >> announcer: chatting with you live at current.com/billpress. this is the "bill press show."
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>> announcer: heard around the country and seen on current tv >> announcer: this is the "bill press show." >> bill: 24 minutes after the hour. president obama making a very clear case a very simple case. a case everybody can understand. hey, we may have some disagreement about what to do about those tax cuts for the rich. but 98% of americans deserve a tax cut. got a bill that's already passed the senate. let's get it through the house and at least do that! because we all agree on it. doesn't that make sense? it makes all kinds of sense! the president is asking americans, republicans and democrats across the country to let members of congress know what that $2,000 would mean to you. $2,000 which you're going to
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have to pay in extra taxes if john boehner doesn't let the house vote on this before the end of the year. and yesterday he gave no indication he's going to budge. he is still talking like -- you know, people believe the b.s. that making the wealthy pay their fair share of tax cuts is going to kill this economy. here's john boehner. >> you're not going to grow the economy if you raise tax rates on the top two. it will hurt small business and hurt our economy. that's why this is not the right approach. >> bill: broken record. we've heard that for the last two years. it is dead wrong. dead wrong! so my2k, what does it mean to you? pete summer. >> we're on twitter at bp show. please tweet us your my 2k suggestions, what you would do with the $2,000. receipt is a says i have a son in college. which is a classic example of someone who could use that money. i have a son in college the additional tax will take away from his needs. do the right thing hash tag
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my2k. if you tweet us, we'll retweet them and help spread the word. >> bill: it won't buy. >> new car or a new house. but $2,000 is a lot of money for somebody making $40,000 $50,000 which is what most americans make. >> you have a child in college. $2,000 goes a long way there. >> bill: school books. >> sure. >> bill: meals. >> beer. >> bill: beer. dee in mechanicsville. hello, dee. what do you say? >> caller: hey bill. well, i say that $2,000 is our emergency rainy day fund. we don't take out loans. if something gets broken around the house we use that extra money that we save from our taxes to fix up our house. >> bill: there you go. that's an important thing. your dishwasher breaks down, you
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got a broken window or something. you know, all of that. >> a couple of grand around. >> bill: anybody has a house knows what you're talking about. >> right. the other thing is that it is really getting under my skin is the fact that the middle class has been contributing. it belongs to the middle class. we're the ones, 98% of us provide the money that they're talking about! >> bill: absolutely. >> caller: so it is already ours. >> bill: paying more than your fair share and again it is so simple that republicans give lip service saying oh no, we can't raise taxes on the middle class. guess what, baby, they're about to. they're about to raise taxes on every american family. the 98% of americans who make less than $250,000 a year. they're about to raise taxes. costing every family $2,000 unless they get their way on millionaires and billionaires.
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marsha down in inglewood florida. >> caller: hi. i've got a little different situation with that. i'm kind of looking forward to going over the cliff. >> bill: yeah? go ahead. >> caller: the reason that $2,000 would benefit me, not benefit me, have it taken away from me is i'm on social security anyway. if i have to -- if i get cut by $2,000 that puts me into a position where i would now be able to get food stamps. i would now be able to qualify for medicaid. >> bill: yeah, mar sharks i hear that but i think first of all, you're a minority. and secondly, you know, that is just going to cost the federal government more money so in the end, that's not the answer either. the answer is to give the middle class the tax cut that they deserve. and i think if enough people use
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the hash tag, we should get it done. hash tag my2k. >> announcer: this is the "bill press show."
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[ ♪ theme music ♪ ] on your radio and on current tv, this is the bill press show. >> welcome. >> this is june 11th, the full court press coming to you live from our nation's capitol all the way across this great land of ours and brought to you by bhil we're talking about president obama launching a nationwide public campaign, a spirited campaign to get those middle class tax cuts, giving
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hash tag my2k to tell members of congress what that $2,000, getting rid of the tax cuts, if the republicans let themmics pire -- if -- to let them expire, what it would mean to you to have that extra $2,000 in your pocket. first, we're getting here to the end of november where we marked veterans day. toward the beginning of the month. we heard so many great stories about real heroes, men and women serving our country in world war i, world war ii, iraq and afghanistan. some of us may have some military heros in our own family that we don't even know about. the way to find out would be to check with ancestry.com. they have a collection of military records that goes back to the civil war, world war i world war ii, even marine corps muster rolls dating back to 1798. i've been tracing my family roots through ancestry.com and encourage you to do so.
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they've made it easier for you by giving you two weeks free access at tryancestry.com where you can access there over $10 billion of historical document online. share my incredible experience. tryancestry.com to see what you can discover with those two weeks free. maybe uncover a military hero in your own family. it is tryancestry.com. before we get back to your calls on my2k, another issue raised at the white house briefing yesterday. by none other than me. my question to jay carney about pot. >> bill: on november 6th the state of colorado and the state of washington voted to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. that's against federal law. does the. >> obama: administration -- does
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the obama administration respect those two state measures? >> bill, i appreciate the question. the department of justice has said that they are reviewing these ballot initiatives to which you refer and i would direct you to them for updates. >> bill: in other words i'm not going to answer that question. so of course i followed through saying don't try to pawn it off on the department of justice. obama's the one that makes the decision. >> bill: the direction will come from the white house whether this is worth the justice department's time and resources. >> the lead law enforcement agency. as the justice department has made clear its enforcement of the control substance act remains unchanged. in enacting the controlled substances act marijuana is a schedule i controlled substance. the president -- in at least a couple of interviews over the course of this year was asked about this. you can find his views in those interviews. >> bill: if you read between the lines you know what that means?
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they are not going to allow colorado residents or washington state residents to have their way on the issue of marijuana. which carney is saying as congress has already said, it is an illegal substance and the department of justice will enforce the law. you watch. i think it is a huge mistake. if anybody, barack obama who admits he smoked pot while in college as do i, barack obama knows that spending time and money and resources chasing potheads in denver and seattle is a total freaking waste of time. and i would think that barack obama of all people, peter works stand up and say hey you know what? let's respect state rights in this area and i hope some other states will do the same thing colorado and washington did. >> it wasn't that long ago we had our friend from normal here. barack obama has been tougher on marijuana users than any other.
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>> bill: it doesn't make sense to us. in the last 11 months, the obama administration has shut down over 400 medical marijuana dispensaries. in colorado and washington state, it is not just medical marijuana that's on the ballot, it is recreational use period. but the obama administration has shut down over 400 medical marijuana dispensaries, more than in the entire eight years under george w. bush. so it is just insane and i'm really disappointed that the white house was willing to say the people of colorado and washington state have spoken, so be it. 1-866-55-press. if you want to get a comment in about pot as well, always welcome. on the my2k, peter what's happening on the social network? >> we'll start in the chat room. current.com/billpress. you can chat with fellow "full court pressers" there and share your my2k reasons. ph says good morning the annual
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$2k means to me is savings contribution to my i.r.a. i don't have a work pension from my job. taking care of my children, elderly parents and self-employment. >> bill: there it is. if we're lucky right we have a little extra money left over and that we can -- before we pay taxes, put it in an i.r.a. and let that build up and build interest. i've done that for the last 20, 25 years. and $2,000 in an i.r.a. every year really adds up. >> we're also on twitter at bpshow. lots of people chiming in. find us there. give us your hash tag. my2k. we'll retweet it and share it with our viewers and listeners. l camp says my 2k helps us pay for our son's preschool. gayle says it keeps a roof over my head for two months. it is more than a year of electric bills. someone came to you and said -- >> bill: put that in perspective. >> boom.
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you have to find a way to pay for your electric bills from now on. >> bill: what john boehner is saying is screw you! you find some other way to pay for your electric bill. find some other way to pay two months rent. find some other way to fund your i.r.a. that's exactly what they're saying. they don't care about the middle class. >> dave farkas on twitter says if i get to keep my 2k, i would give it to a billionaire so he could pay his taxes. >> bill: that's all he would be paying. lennie chiming in from kenosha wisconsin. how are you? >> caller: good. how you doing? >> bill: good. what's it all mean to you my2k? >> caller: i had mentioned that i would like to buy all of my christmas presents with various colored scarves that your wife makes. >> bill: thank you. go to our web site. billpressshow.com. >> caller: i would like some like royal blue and what other
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colors does she make? >> bill: go to the web site, billpressshow.com, lenny. you and carol can work that out. she's got all kinds of different styles. this is just one. rayon chenille. there are also some bamboo scarves there. thanks for the plug, lenny. james is calling from buffalo new york. hi james. your my2k, what does it mean to you? >> i look at it -- i look at things a little differently. there was talk in the campaign about shared sacrifice. i'm part of the middle class. quite frankly i don't want to leave a huge mess for my kids. i mean i hear a lot -- i hear most of the middle class saying let somebody else pay for it. don't take away anything from me. you know what? i'm looking for some patriotism here. hey, guys, you know what? we've got a mess here. as the middle class, we're
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kicking the can down the road. whether they say okay, we'll cut this in half, make it $1,000 or whatever, i'm sorry. there is a big mess in this country. >> bill: i appreciate that spirit. god bless you. i point out two things. number one on your tax form, you can always say i want to contribute x number of dollars to helping pay down the federal debt. and maybe more people ought to do that. god bless you if you do. but the other thing is remember this continued tax cut for the middle class is part of a deficit reduction package so the president is very much focused on getting rid of that debt and getting it off the backs of our kids but in the meantime, it is not necessary to raise tax rates on the middle class in order to get there. and if we did raise taxes on the middle class, it is not going to get us that far down the road. what will really get us down the
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road is getting back to the regular tax cuts, having the wealthiest of americans pay their fair share. letting the 2% go back up from 35% to 39% which they were under bill clinton. one final my2k story from doug up in vancouver washington. what do you say? >> caller: hey bill. let me put my bong down real quick here. [ laughter ] >> caller: you know, there is a certain bunch of us here that think that they're going to get us on entitlement. that's all they keep talking about. nobody's mentioning the military. so i'm with the other caller, the gal before that said let's go over the cliff. you're going to screw us anyway, you know what? everybody take a bite. >> bill: a lot of -- you know, you're not alone doug is what i'm saying. the there are a lot of people who have been saying that. that first of all the only way to beat some sense maybe into the republicans about exactly
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what they're doing and how serious it is to let the country go over the cliff and then the public outrage the market will crash. the economy will sink. and it will be so bad and the public outrage will be so intense that republicans will have to come to their senses on this. i hope we don't have tho get there because if we do, a lot of people will be hurt. we already went through that in the fall of 2008. we let the republicans kick us over the cliff then. i don't want to see it happen again. when we examine back, we're going to be joined by steven sloan who is a senior tax reporter for politico with a lot more insights into what all of these different tax rates mean for middle class. and for the wealthiest of americans. >> announcer: this is the "bill press show." that this guy, to the best of his ability, is trying to look out for us.
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>> announcer: radio meets television. >> announcer: this is the "bill press show." live on your radio and current tv. >> bill: hey 12 minutes now before the top of the hour. in the next hour, olivier knox from yahoo news is going to be here as a "friend of bill." right now we're talking about president obama launching kind of another political campaign yesterday at the white house. in fact, he'll be going on the road tomorrow up to pennsylvania to push the tax cuts for the middle class. yesterday he launched that campaign at the white house by putting out a hash tag for people to use to tell members of congress what -- having an extra $2,000 in your pocket would mean to you. it is hash tag my2k. steven sloan covers these issues for politico. senior tax reporter.
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joining us on our news line this morning. steven, good to talk to you. >> thanks for having me. >> bill: thanks for getting up early this morning. so this -- first of all the -- what they're calling the tax cut for the middle class right just to clarify, it is a tax cut for every american up to $250,000 correct? >> right. even if you're a millionaire the first $250,000 of your income would be subject to this tax cut. >> bill: okay. so the white house is saying that for most american families, middle-class families, if the tax cuts went back up -- if we get rid of that tax cut for the first $250,000, it is going to mean paying an extra $2,000 a year on average. is that correct? do you buy that number? >> yeah. that's a number that's been floated around earlier this year by the tax policy center which is a well-regarded nonpartisan research facility here in washington. >> bill: $2,000 is a lot of
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money for most american families. >> absolutely. this is -- granted, it would be $2,000 spread over the year but it is taken out of your pocket over time. >> bill: so let's take the reverse. on those making over $250,000 a year, if their rates went up from the 35% to 39% which is what proposed, go back to where we were under bill clinton. >> correct. >> bill: what would that impact be? >>i don't have the greatest number for how much their taxes will go up. >> bill: it depends on where they are in that range. >> it brings in about $800 billion in revenue. i can tell you that. >> bill: $800 billion. what would the middle class tax cut bring? over ten years? >> the middle class tax cut does cost money. i don't have the cost estimate in front of me right now. but if you were to really get a ton of revenue, you would
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actually let the middle class tax cut expire because there are obviously more people in those income brackets. >> bill: and what would either -- in terms of -- if i can, i want to play for you something that john boehner said. we played a little earlier in the hour. john boehner still saying right now, his position is we're not going to bring this middle class tax cut up for a vote unless we also extend the tax cuts for the wealthy. here's why john boehner says we have to do that. >> you're not going to grow the economy if you raise tax rates on the top 2 rates. it will hurt small businesses. it will hurt our economy. that's why this is not the right approach. >> bill: so raising taxes on the top 2% he says is a job killer. it is going to destroy the economy. haven't we seen that's not the
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case steven? >> well, the concern here is that you have a lot of small business owners who report their business income every year on their individual tax returns. basically, let's say that i'm a small business owner and you know, my income tax returns show that i make $500,000 a year. but virtually all of that is business income. that's different than somebody getting $500,000 a year in salary and so the concern is that you know, small business owners face the tax hike then they're less willing to invest in equipment. >> bill: i've heard that argument. haven't other economists pointed out that first of all i think it is 95% of small businesses have less than that. >> yeah. a lot of small businesses, you have less than that. susan collins, the republican senator from maine, is actually working on language that would exempt small business income from this tax increase to kind
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of get around this whole -- >> bill: right. and a lot of those so-called small businesses that do have income over that are big law firms or groups of doctors or whatever right? they're not the mom and popcorner store. >> yeah. any time you look at a company that has llp at the end of it or llc, those are -- which we often see in accounting firms and the like, that's what they're talking about. obviously those are your core. >> bill: we've got eight years under bill clinton where this is what the tax rates were. the economy did pretty damn well under bill clinton. haven't we already seen evidence of the fact that what john boehner -- evidence, actual real, world evidence that what john john boehner is saying is not true. >> it is a point that democrats are talking about. >> bill: i'm asking you in your research. >> well, you know, it is not mine to say. you could also argue that spending cuts that were put in place during the -- when
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republicans held the house during the '90s, republicans argue that helped the economy. it wasn't all just bill clinton and his tax rates. there are multiple sides to that coin. i think that you could kind of argue both sides there. >> bill: all right. well thank you steven for joining us. we don't argue both sides on this show. uh-huh. i think that eight years of bill clinton and 22 million new jobs and eight years of sustained economic growth speaks loudly and is all of the proof that we need. we'll be right back. >> announcer: this is the "bill press show." right have, about the "heavy hand of government" ... i want to have that conversation. really? you know i'd like to arm our viewers with the ability to argue with their conservative
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uncle joe over the dinner table.
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>> announcer: taking your e-mails on any topic at any >> announcer: taking your e-mails on any topic at any time, this is the "bill press show." live on your radio and current tv. >> bill: lots of e-mails about susan rice. joe says a different shade of lipstick would qualify what's her name, mccain's 2008 running mate, what's her name -- >> what was her name? >> bill: to be secretary of state. dana says the bolton payback theory may be part of the republican's reason for blocking her nomination. but a bigger part is that if john kerry's chosen instead they think scott brown will be able to fill his senate seat. dick says please point out that republicans have named as chairman of all of their committees that they're responsible for with all white men. no women or people of color. will they never learn?
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no they will never and have never learned anything! >> announcer: this is the "bill press show."
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[ ♪ theme ♪ ] [ ♪ theme ♪ ] >> bill: good morning, everybody. it is thursday, november 29. maybe you already know that. welcome to the "full court press." good to see you this morning. thank you for joining us here as we boom out to you live all the way across this great land of ours on current tv. bringing you all of the stories of the day. from our nation's capital. that's where you'll find us right here on capitol hill. or around the country. around the globe. we've got it covered.
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we want to know what it all means to you. give us a call at 1-866-55-press. poor susan rice still getting hammered by senate republicans. yesterday, oklahoma's james inhoff said that her response to benghazi is what he called "the biggest cover-up in world history." yes, just like james inhoff says that global warming is the biggest hoax in world history and of course, we know james inhoff is the biggest joke in u.s. history. we'll get into that and a whole lot more here. but first she's standing by with the latest. today's current news update from lisa ferguson out in los angeles. hi lisa. good morning. >> hey bill. good morning everyone. now on the surface it seems as though congress is nowhere close to getting a fiscal deal in place before the end of the year. the two sides of the aisle are at a virtual impasse when it comes to entitlement benefits and tax hikes. and while president obama is sending timothy geithner over to
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capitol hill today the president himself was supposed to meet with john boehner this week but now it seems he has no plans of doing that. but politico is reporting this morning that the top officials who have been working on this deal behind the scenes for months now said they are starting to get together an outline of an agreement. if all of that does go through here's what we can expect. for one taxes will go up by about $1.2 trillion. president obama has called for a $1.6 trillion tax hike over the next decade. this is right about in the middle of what democrats want and what republicans say they're willing to give. people making more than $250,000 a year should see limited deductions and loopholes and they'll most likely see a rise in their rates as well. as for entitlement benefits and this mainly goes for medicare, those will be cut by at least $400 billion and potentially a lot more. that would be quite a pill for
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democrats to swallow since many are telling the g.o.p. to keep their hands off social security and medicare. one other thing we will likely see is $1.2 trillion in spending cuts and war savings. we'll be right back. created ad message for little caesars who proudly salutes unites states veterans everywhere. >> hi, i'm rick loz. i joined the united states air force in 1987. as i was leaving the service i went into a civilian career for a little bit but i was looking for a little bit more than what the civilian career had to offer me and that's when learned about the little caesars veterans program. the little caesars veterans program helps the veterans transition to civilian life. they give them credits and discounts on the things that open a new store. it was a program that they were just starting to kick off and i got the honor of being the very first veteran.
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i have three kids and boy, they were very happy to help out. i had one as a cashier, one worked a some of the other stations making pizza in the back. they really enjoyed owning a franchise. one of the other great benefits about owning your own franchise is you can determine how big you want to make it. i started out with one store, i currently have four and i have the opportunity if i so desire to expand beyond that. one of the great things about being one of the first veterans program, i had the opportunity to talk to a lot of veterans. i know a couple of them personally and they now own a store or two so it's really been a great thing for me and i think that's it's been a great program for little caesars.
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>> announcer: broadcasting across the nation on your radio and on current tv, this is the "bill press show." >> bill: hey big lunch at the white house today. can you believe it? barack obama and mitt romney. what do they have to talk about? vacation homes? i don't know. good morning everybody. great to see you today. welcome to the "full court press" here coming to you live on your local progressive talk radio station. you're lucky if you've got one.
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appreciate it. support all of the good sponsors on your local progressive talk radio station. we're coming to you live on current tv. good to see you this morning. thanks for being part of the program and you can join the conversation, let us know what all of these issues we're talking about mean to you. by giving us a call at 1-866-55-press. joins on twitter at bp show or an facebook. facebook.com/billpressshow. we welcome you to the program and particularly warm welcome this morning to our good friend, covers the white house for yahoo news olivier knox, a colleague of mine down there. nice to see you. >> nice to see you. >> bill: thanks for coming in. you're all decked out this morning. >> there is that white house correspondent association christmas party this evening so i figured i had to wear the appropriate tie. i'm not sure the camera can pick it up. >> bill: is it santas? >> they're seals with little balls. i thought it would be nice. >> bill: at christmastime.
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>> it is a media tie. i have a dead fish tie. i have one with a blind squirrel with a nut behind him. these thematic ties. >> i like that. >> i'm the middle-aged guy with the funny ties. >> i like it. clever. not a blatant santa hat hanging from your neck. >> bill: i'm going to have to go through my tie rack and see what i have that might be themed tie for this evening. >> you have a nice collection of ties with the little montage of paisley and butterflies i think that would work really well. give that a shot. >> bill: this peter ogborn, on the bill press team. so is dan henning. phil backert has the phones. cyprian bowlding who -- he's the big winner last night on the powerball. he got the powerball ticket which means he gets his money back. he gets his $2. that's more than i won. >> a win is a win. >> up is up. >> but then again, there's my
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story. i didn't play and i didn't lose any money. i think i might go to the bathroom and just flush dollars down the toilet so get the experience you guys had. i feel left out. >> you can't win if you don't play. >> hey, that's fine. >> bill: so it seems grover norquist, his days may be numbered. more and more republicans are running away from him. i don't think his worry may be so much of the members of congress as their spouses. peter king yesterday talked about grover norquist. said watch out grover. >> this whole thing with norquist came up out of nowhere. again, going back -- the fact that he brought my wife into it, he's never meet me or my wife. he better hope he doesn't because i'll knock his head off. >> going to knock his head off. his wife would knock his head off. >> that's a bad moment. peter king's spouse is going to
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come for grover norquist. >> bill: if king was responding to the fact that grover norquist said his pledge is like the marriage pledge, right. the same power. the same -- and if you take your marriage vows, it is once and forever. and if you sign his pledge, it is once and forever. i don't think most members when they sign that had quite the same -- >> most members thought of as peter king. some of the folks on capitol hill are like yeah, it is. >> he also sounds like a guy who might follow through on that threat, you know. >> he does have that sort of -- >> i was waiting for him to say my wife would knock his freakin' block off. he might have meant it. >> it is interesting to watch. you have members breaking off from grover norquist. i can find a way. either i'm going to find a way around this or we need to consider the basic pledge in order not to raise taxes to fill the deficit hole. >> bill: i'm skeptical about
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it. olivier knox is here as a "friend of bill." going to be joined by senator chris cubes from my -- chris kuhns from my home state of delaware. randy weingarten will be our guest in studio in the next hour. but first... >> this is the "full court press." >> other headlines making news on this tuesday -- thursday. sorry. wow. two tickets matched the $579.9 million. they were purchased in arizona and missouri. check your tickets. >> bill: red states. >> check your tickets though. 8.9 million people won at least a couple bucks off last night's drawing. seven of those won $2 million and several more won $1 million. >> bill: i would be happy with a million. >> several more won a million bucks? >> 5 16, 22, 23, 29 and the powerball is 6. >> bill: you have to have the
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numbers across. not scattered around. >> not like bingo. >> one thing washington can agree on these days is the popularity of the rookie washington redskins quarterback rgiii. he is not ruling out a career in politics. rgiii telling yahoo, spoke with your colleague chris moody saying he wants to eventually go to law school and leave the door open to possibly enter politics in the future. he did work on this election cycle with rock the vote, encouraging young people to get out. >> bill: where does he live? >> i believe in d.c. that was the implication from chris moody's piece. >> bill: he could be our shadow senator. >> and the white house unveiled its 2012 christmas deckations yesterday. michelle obama welcoming military families to 1600 pennsylvania avenue to introduce this year's theme called joy to all. bo, the dog, a big part of this year's decorations and there is
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a massive gingerbread house that weighs about $300 pounds. 90,000 people will tour the white house decorations this season. >> you're kidding. >> maybe they'll get bo cookies as did some members of the press corps. they were coveting those. >> are they made from real dogs? >> not made from real bo. >> bill: you have to get there early to get the bo cookies. i always make a beeline and they're usually gone by the time i get there. so olivier what's going on with this lunch with president obama and mitt romney at the white house? do you think anything -- first of all i don't remember this being a tradition. is it? >> well, it is a little bit of a tradition. the atlantic has a wonderful slide show of photos of presidents and the people they beat. granted, some of it is from inauguration photos. of course, they're invited to sit in the stands. some of them are pretty classic.
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there is a meeting between president obama and senator john mccain. there are a few photos like this but it is an interesting lunch. we're not going to see it though. if we see it it will be an official photo release. we won't get a camera in the room. we know what it isn't. it isn't public. it is not an offer a cabinet post. jay carney made that clear and it is not a beer summit. >> bill: it could be an o'doul summit. >> or a milk sum et. -- summit. >> the president said both on election night and then at a press conference a week later he wanted to talk to mitt romney saying that he thought he had some good ideas saying that maybe his of his management experience running the salt lake city could be applied to streamlining the federal government. >> bill: i heard the president say that. i thought he was just sort of making nice, right? but then he for actually followed through and invited him to lunch. >> mitt romney got a lot of applause for the way he handled
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the salt lake city olympics. he turned a wretched enterprise into a success. >> bill: with a lot of federal money. >> the federal government doesn't lack for that now. i guess it does now. the word is around the white house, they do respect his experience on that and they do hope -- >> bill: they haven't met that many times. >> no, they have not. there is no way during this campaign you get the impression they respected each other. >> bill: no, not at all. i think when they did meet, they've never had a chance to exchange views a debate is hardly a sit down and have lunch kind of conversation. >> carney is promising it will be a substantial discussion. >> bill: why aren't reporters -- why aren't we allowed to get a photograph the lunch? >> i sort of love this excuse from jay carney. they were in the public eye so often during the election that we need to give them a little private time. >> yeah, right. >> harumph. obviously my expectation is --
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>> bill: mitt romney hates the camera. >> i don't think anyone in that room hates a camera. you don't get to be a politician of that level by hating the camera. so they're going to sit down at 12:30 in the private dining room of the white house and well, we'll probably get you know, anonymous officials telling us what they talked about. >> bill: we'll get an official white house photograph. >> the official white house photo which is basically like -- >> bill: pete will get his shot. >> that's right. >> bill: on capitol hill yesterday, susan rice made her second appearance. and following getting hammered after she met with john mccain and lindsey graham, of course, yesterday susan collins of all people came out. when you lose susan collins -- >> you've got a problem. it is no is surprise that john mccain lindsey graham and kelly ayotte would come out strong against susan rice and say essentially that they would try to block her confirmation if
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her nomination happens. it is much more of a surprise to hear susan collins referred to on capitol hill as one of the moderate republicans who is gettable on big votes like this. instead, what we heard is susan collins saying no, i'm not won over yet. you need to explain more about what happened both in benghazi and what happened in the aftermath of benghazi and that is a real problem. yesterday, we were talking about this earlier but yesterday was the first time that i heard democrats on the hill and we can ask senator about this but the first time we heard them say whoa, we don't think we have the votes to confirm sunnies a rice if we -- susan rice if we lose susan collins and other republicans like her. >> bill: susan collins, in her part of her statement yesterday she said that one of the things she had against susan rice was that what happened in benghazi was an eerie echo of the 1998 bombings of our embassies in kenya and tanzania when susan rice happened to be working at the department of state as an assistant secretary state.
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isn't this really bizzaro land? what's she saying? susan rice goes around the world bombing embassies wherever she is? for susan collins whom i thought was pretty smart that is really weird. >> we're hearing more and more from conservatives, from republicans who are linking back to the clinton era and rice's record. >> bill: what's the evidence? can people just say any freakin' thing they want today? >> yes. you've seen politics in the last couple of years bill. in fact, more than that. yes. but in this case, what they're making the argument is that there were intelligence failures in the past. and this looks like an intelligence failure now. you know, i don't know that any american remembers the 1998 embassy bombings to be perfectly honest with you. >> bill: where they were. >> apart from the families of the people who were killed but i
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don't think anybody remembers that. >> bill: but you make an interesting point. maybe indirectly. maybe inadvertently. >> all of my good points are indirect. >> bill: you talk about intelligence failures. i think one could easily raise questions about whether or not there was enough security at the embassy. yes, was that susan rice's job? one could easily raise questions about failure in intelligence in iraq, afghanistan, in libya. question, was that susan rice's job? the answer to both of those is no. why do you think there's such an obsession with susan rice? >> well, i think it's a focus on -- first of all, part of it is a focus on benghazi, not on susan rice. the republicans are pretty ticked off. there is, of course, a political advantage to hammering the president on benghazi. we've had testimony now on the hill saying there were requests for more security. they didn't get them. there was intelligence and extremist activity. it wasn't really heated. >> bill: those are good to examine. i keep saying why are they
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singling out susan rice? >> at a time when they knew they were going to face questions about intelligence failures, their point person, the anointed point person for the administration is someone with no experience in intelligence in security. susan rice. the administration made her the point person. she's become a lightning rod as a result of that. the other thing is a lot of republicans would really love if the president nominates her we keep forgetting this, if the president nominates her, they would love to hand him a defeat. this is someone close to the president for a very high profile job. they would -- a lot of republicans on the hill would love to score a win here. >> bill: it is also being floated that one other factor here may be that if he can't nominate susan rice, then he has to nominate john kerry and that opens the door for -- >> a special election in massachusetts. >> bill: special election in massachusetts. scott brown comes riding back on his -- in his red pickup.
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>> potentially. right. the president met with massachusetts governor duvall patrick and everyone thought oh, does that mean he's leaning toward picking kerry because he might have someone who could slide into that job. i don't know if that's what's going to go down. these are all definitely factors. >> bill: yesterday, you and i were there at the white house yesterday when the president launched a big new political campaign. my2k. what's that all about? we'll get into that with olive yea knox. you can join the conference at 1-866-55-press. thursday, november 29. we'll be right back. >> announcer: this is the "bill press show." [ male announcer ] it's that time of year again. time for citi price rewind. because your daughter really wants that pink castle thing. and you really don't want to pay more than you have to. only citi price rewind
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>> announcer: this is the "full court press." the "bill press show." live on your radio and on current tv. >> bill: hey 25 minutes after the hour here on this thursday morning. bill press here. your male model for the day. this is another one of my wife, carol press' beautiful hand-woven scarves. i love this purple. purple and green combination here this morning. at any rate. i've told you about them. they make perfect holiday -- first of all, they're great to wear for men and women. make perfect holiday gifts. you can find out more about them and all of the different designs that carol has. carol press hand-woven scarves if you go to "bill press show" and follow the click to carol's scarves. >> you do a great job as a male model though. >> bill: don't i though? i have a new future? >> absolutely. >> bill: olivier knox from yahoo news. the president is urging americans to use this hash tag my2k and tell members of congress what that $2,000 would
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mean to you. this is a whole new political campaign he started. >> it is interesting. there are a couple of facets to this. one is they've used twitter hash tag in the past for the payroll tax cut holiday and for the student loan interest rate fight. both ended up going their way. >> bill: yeah, right. >> but you know, those were part of two successful campaigns. and they're trying to do the same thing here. obviously they're happy to get media coverage of the campaign as well because that is the issue. talk about posting messages in your member of congress' facebook site. the my2k thing looks like it is doing pretty well. >> they can't say anything about it. >> new media. >> we're getting a lot of comments. we're tweeting at bp show at bp show. coach tweeting my 2k will help pay the co-pay for my daughter's
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asthma medical bills. the other says i have no car and i would use it as a downpayment. and jen says we've gotten a lot of tweets from single parents jen says i'm a student and a single mom. i would use it for child care while i'm in school plus books school and rent. tweet us. we're retweeting them at bp show. >> bill: most americans fall in this category. with an income of $40,000 $50,000 a year, $2,000 is a lot of money. >> even for me. i don't want to make light of this. it is a chunk of change. the other thing is the white house is convinced they have a major winner here on the issue itself. so they're going to keep pushing this. >> bill: it is going to be hard for republicans in the house to hold the line. >> we're already seeing that. we're seeing them fragments. tom cole, for example saying no no. let's do this thing. get this off the table. >> bill: and take some credit for it.
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olivier knox stays with us. senator chris kuhns from delaware joining us when we come back. >> announcer: this is the "bill press show."
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>> announcer: chatting with you live at current.com/billpress this is the "bill press show." live on your radio and current tv. >> bill: good morning everybody. welcome back here to the "full court press." it is 33 minutes after the hour now here on this beautiful thursday. a little chilly but beautiful thursday morning here in our nation's capital. good to see you today. don't forget you can join the conversation at any time at 1-866-55-press. olivier knox from yahoo news here as a "friend of bill" this hour. and another "friend of bill," a
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senator from my home state senator chris kuhns joining us in studio. great to see you senator. little fresh air from delaware coming in. olivier spent some of his thanksgiving holiday in new castle delaware. you've got a delaware trifecta today. >> bill: new castle, delaware, close to delaware city, delaware. new castle was the big town that we went to. and then there was wilmington. kind of progressed up. they still call people canal rats? that's what i was called. >> no. >> bill: senator, one of the big issues i want to ask you about, you're on the foreign affairs committee of the united states senate, susan rice is being pounded now two days in a row by republican senators. do you think in any way she deserves -- should get any
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responsibility for the confusion surrounding what happened in benghazi? >> well, bill, first i'm confident that susan rice is a very capable representative of the united states. very experienced. very senior member of the foreign service. she's done a great job i think for us at the united nations. she's fought tirelessly for america's interests in very difficult times. when the united nations is a place where we often face significant challenges. and i understand that there was a lot of concern and anger initially about benghazi and about what happened and about the differences and reports but as this has been peeled back and more and more of the details have come out as best as i can make sense of it, the persistent criticism of her is that she represented the administration, went on talking -- went on different talk shows and went different radio shows and presented it based on intelligence she was given. this is far from the first time that a secretary of state u.n. ambassador has been given bad
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intelligence and repeated it publicly and why that makes her somehow unfit to serve as secretary of state is beyond me. in my view, if there's some unhappiness about the incidence in benghazi, some deep concern about security, there ought to be a broad look into what happened. why four americans died. surprise. that's happening. there is a thorough on-going investigation and independent outside investigation being done that's required by law. it was started very soon after these terrible incidents where four americans died. but why that justifies this public pillaring of susan rice is beyond me. i don't quite get what it is she's accused of doing that would make her literally unqualified to serve. >> bill: as i understand it, the accusation is that she deliberately -- she went out to deliberately mislead or was sent out to deliberately mislead the american people as to the exact nature of the protest in benghazi but again the talking
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points, that's what they call them by the way talking points were prepared by the intelligence agencies. we do know that is it the c.i.a. or the fbi, one or the other deleted any reference to possible terrorist activity at the time because they didn't want to trigger or let people know that's what they were looking into but again she's not the one that wrote the talking points or edited the talking points. she also said at the time look, these may not prove to be true down the road but this is what we've got so far. >> that's right. my impression of this is yours which is that she read from prepared talking points and delivered messages that had been vetted and developed by the intelligence community in what was a chaotic and rapidly developing situation. it became clear fairly quickly that the attack on the benghazi consulate was a premeditated effort by terrorists. the president used the word terrorist actions the next day. and this isn't something -- this
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isn't iran-contra. this wasn't concealed for six months or a year. there wasn't complete disavow of any knowledge. this was the intelligence community saying we shouldn't be out there publicly in the first 24 hours after the attack saying that we know exactly what it is. and there being some miscommunications and some sloppiness in the preparation of public presentations. now frankly if susan rice had instead gone ahead and gone on talk shows and shared what she believed to be classified information, right if she had done the opposite -- >> bill: she would have been hammered for that. >> despite the talking points, i'm going to go ahead and say what i have been told privately is secure information, she would be in great trouble for that. so exactly what the path is that she was supposed to follow, i don't get clearly. >> some of the republicans on capitol hill have been saying so at a time when they knew they were going to get questions about alleged intelligence failures and security, the
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administration made susan rice their point person. someone who this week, jay carney said had no experience in intelligence dissemination or consular security. one of the republican charges, it is not implausible is so why wasn't that james clapper the director of national intelligence. why wasn't it hillary clinton or another senior state department official? pat kennedy, who actually does have some oversight over embassy security. one of the complaints that i hear when the cameras are turned off is that she basically stepped into that role willingly knowing that they were keeping the intelligence folks off the sunday shows in order to have some kind of plausible deniability. that last part is a little more confusing but i'm curious do you have a sense of -- why would they pick the ambassador to the united nations to be the point person on issues that they now say she had no real expertise on? >> i don't know. i can't speak to exactly why on
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that sunday, the administration chose that particular foreign policy leader to go on sunday shows as opposed to other folks in the administration. my hunch is -- this is really just my guess. it isn't something i've coordinated. >> no talking points with the intelligence? >> no talking points. my view of it is that this was obviously a terrible incident where americans were killed. and there was clear sort of lack of full coordination and communication between elements of the executive branch. and they made a choice to have her be the sort of face forward for the administration on responding to questions about what had happened and why and when and where. i would be joining calls for an investigation and a joint committee and so forth if the administration were stonewalling and saying we won't be accountable for this. we won't tell you what happened. we won't get into the background. that's not been my experience. the senate foreign relations committee on which i serve
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unanimously sent a letter to the administration asking that we be briefed promptly after the elections when we got back into session because we were out of session. and it was the first week we were back. virtually every member of the foreign relations committee came. we got very high-level briefings from state and from the intelligence community that put to rest my concerns about the administration being willing to be clear. about what happened in the communication time lines. there are other senators who continue to pound away at this. in my view, what they're really trying to do is to go after the president and his views of his leadership on foreign policy and they're making susan rice the person between them and the president at whom they're really firing. >> bill: do you believe she would make a good secretary of state? >> i do. i must say i don't know her that well. i obviously have served closely with senator kerry as chairman of the senate foreign relations committee. i've only met ambassador rice in passing and briefly. she hasn't come and briefed me on africa issues because she's
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engaged fully at the united nations. but she did serve as the assistant secretary for african affairs in her mid-30s in the clinton administration. that's my subcommittee on the foreign relations committee and the folks who i know and have worked with in the state department who have worked closely with her speak very highly of her and say she's a competent, capable career person with a lot of experience at a senior level. >> when do we find out when the president is going to nominate? this is the other big d.c. -- that's in the discussion of susan rice. when are we going to find out? >> i think they're making an assessment of how implacable a foe they have in senator mccain and whether or not the few senators who have said ayotte mccain, graham, whether they'll filibuster her that's gotta be somewhat of a balance for them because the main thing we ought to be working on, talking about
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resolving is the fiscal cliff. it simply puts another dysfunctional fight between republicans in congress and the administration front page for them to nominate a new secretary of state and have her held up for weeks and weeks at a time when there's issues all over the world that demand a clear and strong secretary of state. to her qualifications, i'll say this. it is vital in negotiating with foreign heads of state in representing the united states around the world in crisis spots and in working with close allies that a secretary of state be known to have the full confidence of the president. that they be trusted and relied upon. she certainly does have that. a close relationship. >> bill: on the fiscal cliff what is going to happen. will we avoid going over the fiscal cliff? senator chris coons will tell us that when we come back here on the "full court press." nothing like pressure here. >> announcer: this is the "full court press." the "bill press show." live on your radio and on current tv.
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i think the number one thing that viewers like about the young turks is that we're honest. they can question whether i'm right, but i think that the audience gets that this guy, to the best of his ability, is trying to look out for us.
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>> announcer: on your radio and on current tv, this is the "bill press show." >> bill: here we go. 13 minutes before the top of the hour. senator chris cooks from delaware with us. olivier knox from yahoo news. senator and olivier and i were at the white house yesterday. >> what is that? >> it is the who. >> bill: story about the
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fiscal cliff. okay. we were at the white house yesterday. president obama launching his new political campaign to get americans to speak up and say what $2,000 would mean to them which is $2,000 more they're going to have to pay in taxes unless the house republicans vote for this 98% the tax cuts for 98% of americans which the senate has already approved. do you think it is going to happen and are we going to avoid going over the fiscal cliff? >> this is a very tough situation we're in as a country. i just want to re-emphasize what the president was saying yesterday. the senate of the united states by a 51-vote margin, has already passed an extension of the so-called bush tax cuts, the lower tax rates for 98% of american families. 97% of small businesses on all income below $250,000 a year. the house has to join us. folks love to talk about how business hates uncertainty and uncertainty is terrible for the market. well, the easiest way to end the uncertainty about the fiscal
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cliff and tax rates and their potential impact of the vast majority of americans as they go into this vital holiday shopping season that's pretty central to our economy is for us to pass that and say okay, that part of this is over. the $2,000 on average tax hike that most working families are facing, if we go over the cliff done, taken care of. now, let's work through the balance of increased revenue on the high income earners and spending cuts that we need to get done to achieve a roughly $4 trillion savings. >> bill: and closing loopholes and other issues. >> that's a difficult process. there's lots of detail to it. in my view, there's two bad outcomes here that are quite possible. first is we do nothing. which is -- something we seem to have shown some real capability of. but if we go over the if is cal cliff, which is really more of a slope than a cliff. it is not like y2k where january 1, everybody has a dramatic cuts in services and dramatic increases in taxes.
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that will smooth in over time. that will happen over some time. there's things the president can do to delay the impact of that on the average family. but it is going to be a big shock to the markets and to lots of folks' savings and pensions if we get right up to the end of the year and we haven't had some healthy, clear negotiation about what's the path forward. some framework some downpayment and some bridge. so one bad thing we kick the can down the road. the other we go over the fiscal cliff but without any clear path forward or plan. in my view, a really bad plan is worse than no plan. at the end of the last congress, where i was here as a member of the lame duck, we were prevailed upon, persuaded to vote for a two-year extension of the bush tax cuts. the price of that was -- had we not done that, unemployment insurance. where millions of americans would have ended. in the days up to that vote, i got painful personal calls visits from friends neighbors
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people i know from delaware who are unemployed, long-term unemployed would have gone off of unemployment insurance. right now, we're facing three million americans going off unemployment insurance by january. for example, one of many sort of unspoken about potentially very negative consequences if all of the current law is enacted. now, there are many in the senate democratic caucus, this is part of what you were referring to who are saying we should go over the cliff. let me be clear about why. we see time and time and time again the vast majority, 95% of republicans in congress have signed a pledge to grover norquist and americans for tax reform saying they will not raise tax rates or allow any tax loopholes to be closed in a way that raises revenue. so it is great that we've now had what is it, three, four senators say that their pledge to america is more important than their pledge to grover norquist. i personally thanked saxby chambliss from georgia
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yesterday, a real conservative for violating the pledge, for speaking the truth and saying we need to fix the problem. but it is four. not 45, not 47. it is four. the reality is we may very well not get a change in the house republican majority, a willingness on their part. if it is january 1, all of these tax rates will have reset and they would be able to then enact a big tax cut by reenacting the current tax rates for 98% of americans. that kind of logic only makes sense in washington. in my view, we ought to come to some responsible bipartisan broad agreement now and save all of the chaos and save all of the press coverage of the next five weeks. but we may well not get there. it is better for us to go over the cliff than for the democrats to again agree to a deal in which entitlements get slashed and vital supports for low income seniors, for the disabled, for children who are vulnerable in medicaid get taken
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away. so that's the bigger dynamic. >> bill: amen to that. i'm going to ask you for 30 seconds, we're right up against the clock. you mentioned this word so i have to ask you. will we get filibuster reform? >> i'm optimistic. we've had some very serious conversations in caucus about it. leader reid has fundamentally changed his view from two years ago when we discussed it before. the proposals that the democrats have put on the table for rules reform are modest and responsible. it is essentially this. if you're going to filibuster, you have to earn it. you have to actually be there and speak. that's not the way the rules work right now. you can object and we're done and then it is the obligation, the burden is on the majority to assemble 60 votes to cut off debate rather than on the 40 who are trying to sustain debate. a so-called filibuster. >> bill: let's go back to the real filibuster. the way it used to be. senator chris coons, thank you for coming in this morning. >> good to see you in delaware.
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>> bill: yes indeed. olivier knox thanks for coming in. we'll see you at the white house later today. i'll be back and tell what you the president's up to today. another busy schedule at the white house. lunch with mitt romney! how about that. >> announcer: this is the "full court press." [ male announcer ] it's that time of year again. time for citi price rewind. because your daughter really wants that pink castle thing. and you really don't want to pay more than you have to. only citi price rewind automatically searches for the lowest price. and if it finds one, you get refunded the difference. just use your citi card show, to be able to come away armed with the facts, and the arguments to feel confident in their positions. i want them to have the data and i want them to have the passion.
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[ ♪ theme ♪ ] >> announcer: this is the "bill press show." >> announcer: this is the "full court press." the "bill press show." live on your radio and on current tv. >> bill: all right. at the top of the next hour, we're going to be talking about whether or not republicans
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learned anything on november 6th when you look at the house republicans choices for committee chairs, the answer seems to be they didn't learn anything. down at the white house today, president obama and the vice president will get their daily briefing at 10:25 this morning. after which the president will be meeting with his senior advisers until he has a meeting at noon with america's nobel prize winners for 2012. coming into the white house to be congratulated by the president. and then that historic lunch at 12:30 today in the private dining room just off the oval office. president obama welcoming governor mitt romney. for lunch. jay carney will assemble us in the white house press corps for his daily briefing at 12:45. maybe i'll ask him another question about pot today. maybe today -- >> you would! >> bill: maybe today i could
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get an answer. randy weingarten from the american federation of teachers in the next hour.
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[ ♪ theme ♪ ] >> bill: good morning everybody. welcome to the "full court press." hour number three here on this thursday november 29. good to see you today. welcome, welcome welcome. and join the conversation at any time. we invite you as we tell you what's happening today especially here from our nation's capital. with the senate and the house and the white house trying to get together on how to avoid the
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fiscal cliff. give us a call at 1-866-55-press. and president obama with an unusual guest for lunch at the white house today. none other than mitt romney himself. tagg, by the way, was not invited. secret service says he couldn't bring tagg along with him. no photographers will be allowed. no alcohol will be served. the white house has not released what the agenda will be but they did release the menu. mitt romney will be served a healthy helping of crow. can't wait to see that. we'll be right back here. but first let's get all of the latest today's current news update from lisa ferguson out in los angeles. hi lisa, good morning. >> hey bill, good morning everyone. the election may be over but many of president obama's supporters are not ready to call it quits just yet. obama for america is out with a new poll this week surveying one million obama voters and they found 80% want to continue volunteering. that will most likely be around
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the president's legislative agenda. the survey found one out of every ten people is interested in running for office and almost half forwarded obama campaign e-mails at some point during the race. this poll is part of the campaign's efforts to put a huge list of resources and contacts to use after the election. former manager jim messina says yes, the group will live on but it will not get passed on to the next democratic nominee. bill clinton is also reaching out to his supporters. in this case, he's asking them to help pay down hillary clinton's campaign debt from 2008. as of the end of september she still owed $73,000. the incentive here, clinton is offering the chance for donors to spend the day with him if they can help pay down his wife's debt before december 6th. as the country's top diplomat, hillary clinton is not allowed to engage in any sort of campaigning. the supreme court will decide tomorrow whether ta take up the defense of marriage act. two federal appeals courts have
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ruled against section three of doma which bans federal benefits for same-sex couples. experts say it is likely the court will reconsider doma and it will make that announcement next week. we'll be right back. you're about to watch an viewer created ad message for little caesars who proudly salutes united states veterans everywhere. >> clarksville is a small town on the tennesse/kentucky boader and it is a really great place to raise a family. my name is lloyd allard i was a chief officer in the special forces, i was in the army for 23 years. i have made 1400 parachute jumps. well, my experience in the military was varied. i spent a lot of time in iraq, a lot of time in kuwait. i did two tours in iraq and i decided it was time to do something different with my life. i saw little caesars as a way to give something back to my family. the little caesars veterans program provides financial support and equipment when you open your store. the little caesars veterans program give me a sense of
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ownership and pride in my business because i am the owner of this business. as a former military person i did not have the business experience and little caesars provided the training and support along the way to get that experience. my family and i all work together in my little caesars stores. tanya and i have have four children and three of them are involved in the management of the little caesars stores. it's a real privilege to be able to work with them after so many years in the military i wouldn't see them for months on end now i get to spend every day working with them in the stores. my stores are very involved in the local community. we're involved in the little league programs and we're involved in the red cross. mr. and mrs. ilitch they founded little caesars are my personal heros because of the dedication they put into this program and the dedication they put every day in their lives into helping other people.
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[ ♪ theme ♪ ] >> announcer: broadcasting across the nation on your radio >> announcer: broadcasting across the nation on your radio and on current tv, this is the "bill press show." >> bill: guess who's coming to lunch. mitt romney! lunch at the white house. i doubt that he will be brown-bagging it. good morning everybody. what do you say? it is the "full court press" here on current tv and your local progressive talk radio station. good to see you today. good to be with you today. and we thank you for joining the
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program. you're part of the program the most important part of the program, i believe. you certainly -- your opinions count on these issues as much as mine do. we like to hear from you and invite you to join the conversation. not just tune in to find out what's going on but tune in and weigh in yourself and sound off yourself by giving us a call at 1-866-55-press. follow us on twitter at bpshow or on facebook at facebook.com/billpressshow. so much to talk about today. white house president obama launching a political campaign yesterday to say americans have to tell members of congress what it's going to mean to them to have to pay $2,000 more in taxes to have $2,000 less spending money next year. what could they use the $2,000 for and putting it out there that the way to get that message out is to use twitter and the hash tag my2k.
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not y2k but my2k. we'll cover the waterfront for you. take your calls, read your comments on facebook and twitter. get right into the issues of the day here with the entire team. peter ogborn and dan henning. hello, guys. >> happy thursday. >> bill: with phil backert on phones and cyprian bowlding on the camera. on the video cam. he is a lucky camper today because of all of us here in the studio, he had a powerball winner. not the big big winning number. >> he won powerball. we'll leave it there. >> bill: he won powerball. >> he won $4. >> bill: spend $10 you get $4 back. >> what a deal. >> what a bargain. >> bill: here's what it sounded like last night. everybody gathered around the tube. >> number five. next up.
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the number 23. here's a picture of ricky la grange from louisiana. he won $1 million, just one of our many powerball winners. next number is 16. after that the number 22. trownd out tonight with the number 29. all right now for tonight's winning powerball number and for the over half a billion jackpot it is the number 6. >> bill: i was a total strike-out. so was dan. cyprian got the powerball and $6. >> $4. >> i didn't play and i didn't lose any money. >> bill: i was hoping i could win so i could buy one of carol's scarves for christmas. we started out this morning with the gray. a lot of different colors. you can find out for yourself. hand woven by my wife, carol. they're beautiful. rayon chenille, they're warm. great holiday presents. we had the gray on in the first hour this morning.
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last hour, this purple with a little green. this hour, we've chosen the blue. i love this blue scarf. >> beautiful. i like that. >> bill: goes with the shirt. >> you've accessorized. this is great! >> bill: so check it out. go to our o web site, billpressshow.com and at the very top carol's scarves. see the beautiful designs and choices and get in touch with her and take it away. randy weingarten, head of the american federation of teaches very upset about the impact on education if we go over the fiscal cliff. joining us in studio. but first the "full court press." >> on this thursday, other headlines making news, a shock day in washington, d.c. sports. the washington wizards actually won a game! the nba team picked up its first win -- >> nba championships! road starts here! >> first win of the season barely.
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84-82 over the portland trail blazers. >> 84-82. >> after starting the season with 12 straight losses, now 1-12 team still have some catching up to do. the next worst teams toronto and cleveland they each have three wins apiece. >> we'll get there. at the end of the season, we'll be celebrating a wizards championship. >> bill: they lost 12 in a row. >> new high for starbucks. the coffee chain has introduced a new cup of coffee that costs $7 a cup. as regular coffee, it is not a latte. black coffee $7. from costa reek ca the most expensive cup to brew ever from the chain comes from beans in central america that are difficult to cultivate. only in 50 stores nationwide. but if people keep buying it, they'll expand it. >> bill: this is crazy. >> i'm curious what that would taste like. >> $7 for a cup of coffee. >> i will be honest. i think that's insane but i'm curious to know what it tastes
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like. >> could be very very -- i'll bet it would be very good. >> bill: i read this article when i was away about white tea. this is the hottest thing for like tea drinkers. it is a white tea. very little -- it sounds like this. very little of it is grown. all grown from china and for people who are really -- tea snobs, they have to have their white tea. it is like $8 a cup of tea. >> you know what i call white tea? a cup of hot water. here is your white tea. >> bill: you forgot to put the tea bag in. >> even if you didn't win the grand prize in last night's powerball jackpot, you should definitely double check your ticket. you may have won a smaller prize. a lot of people don't do that. and that's why according to the multi-state lottery association of the $40 billion in lottery prizes awarded in the u.s. each year $800 million goes uncollected. >> bill: i double checked i triple checked i quad ruled
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checked my lottery ticket before i ripped it up. >> a lot of money. >> claim your prize. if you're going to play, at least double check to make sure you won. >> bill: all right. talk about a bunch of losers. house republicans. it is really just funny. because the big question -- after we heard all this stuff right, after the election, november 6th oh, my god republicans lost every group possible subgroup of americans except white males. they lost the african-american vote. they lost the women's vote. the latino vote. the asian-american vote. they lost the young vote. you know, you name it, right? but white males came through. everybody was saying from mitt romney on down we have
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parties -- we have to diversify. we have to reach out. we have to show that we're the inclusionary party. it is not just the democrats. we have to embrace women. we have to embrace racial minorities. we've gotta really show that we're the party for everybody. well, that's what they said. you know what? i didn't believe it at the time and now we know that, in fact, they didn't mean beans! if you don't believe that, look at what has happened -- what was announced yesterday in the house of representatives. by house republicans john boehner and eric cantor. had a news conference where they revealed the names of their new committee chairs. for the 113th congress which takes office in january. now first of all whin -- when you look at the two sides of the house, there is a lot of difference between the two sites
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of the house. on the democratic side, for the first time ever there are more women and minority members than there are white males. white males make up only 47% now of the democratic members of the house. if you look on -- you can see -- see this on c-span, if you look on the right-hand side, if you look on the republican side of the aisle you will find just the opposite. there are more white males in higher percentage of white males than in -- probably not ever before. at one time, there were only white males in the house and the senate. but more certainly than in recent years. compared to 47% of white males among democrats 90% 9-0
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percent of the house are white males. and so all of this talk about diversity didn't show up in the election. you know what it reminds me of? it reminds me of the national conventions. you ever notice a difference between -- do you notice this year, i've attended so many republican conventions. if you saw the shots from tampa this year, it looked like a shot of the chamber of commerce in an all white town. seriously. you look at the shots from charlotte, it looked like america. >> totally different version. looks like a whitewashed version of the g.o.p. >> bill: that's what the house now looks like. but you would think still given the rhetoric that we have to reach out, the rhetoric of the inclusionary party they might have made some effort to show a little bit of diversity in their choice of committee chairs. no no, no!
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so here's what i'm working up to. yesterday, john boehner, eric cantor released the names of 19 committee chairs. all 19 are men all 19 are white men. so that's the best that they could do. this shows how much they learned on november 6th which is nothing. now, they had some choices by the way. i mean yeah, for -- among democrats, there are 57 women in the democratic caucus but 20 women in the republican caucus so you can't tell me among the 20 women, there was not one they could have made a committee chair just to show a little diversity? >> they even said, john stanton from "buzzfeed" who was our guest earlier this week said michigan congresswoman candace miller was a prime contender for the house homeland security committee chair and she didn't get it. >> bill: they jumped over her to take a white guy who was on -- not even on that committee
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but on some other committee and bumped him up. i forget his name. >> on that note, just a few moments ago on a different tv show, stuart stevens romney adviser was on giving a post-mort emof what happened with the election. he said we didn't do a good enough job reaching out to hispanic voters and women voters. that was their problem. that's why -- he admitted that's why they lost the election. >> bill: all right. there you go. now -- have they learned anything? i would say the answer is no! by the way among african-americans, democrats 41 african-americans in the democratic caucus. with allen west getting booted out. there will be one republican african-american in the 113th congress. how can they justify -- how can they -- are they really saying that in our entire caucus, there's not one hispanic, not one african-american, not one
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woman worthy of a committee chair? that the only people who are qualified enough are white males? boy, i'm telling you you know, i think the republican party -- if it continues down this path, the republican party will cease to exist. 1-866-55-press. don't you think this speaks volumes about how out of touch they are with america? how out of touch their values and the policies are with america and certainly their makeup. 1-866-55-press. just start calling them the old white male farts party. >> i like that. >> announcer: this is the "full court press." the "bill press show," live on your radio and on current tv.
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>> announcer: this is the "bill press show." live on your radio and current tv. >> bill: joe cirincione is our >> announcer: chatting with you live at current.com/billpress this is the "bill press show." live on your radio and current tv. >> bill: 24 minutes after the hour now. randy weingarten, president of the american federation of teachers joining us in the next hour. expecting calls about the republican's 19 committee chairs in the house of representatives. 19 of them held by white males. is that the best they can do? but first we've been talking about what $2,000 might mean to you. a lot of american families hard up and looking for some extra income. here's another suggestion. check out incomeathome.com. you heard me talk about them before.
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they're america's leading work from home business. they do business in over 80 countries today so they know what they're doing. they can help you no matter your age, education or experience, help you literally make money from your own laptop sitting at your own kitchen table 24/7. at least check it out if you're sick of living paycheck to paycheck worried about job security or retirement, incomeathome.com. that's where to go. they're even giving away $1,000 to somebody just for checking them out. and that somebody could be you. visit incomeathome.com. that's incomeathome.com. before we go to the phones, peter, what's happening? >> today is the big day. barack obama and mitt romney will join together for lunch. >> bill: yes yes. >> we asked the question on twitter what would they eat? what should barack obama serve to mitt romney? >> bill: crow. >> lots of people have said
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serve him crow. other people said serve him humble pie. some other creative suggestions. tyler says serve him a fresh glass of shutup juice. i'm not sure if that counts as a strong drink or not. 808 -- >> bill: isn't that what mormons drink? >> serve him some 7-eleven cookies. he got the cookies from a local bakery. looks like you got them from a 7-eleven or something. serve him some 7-eleven and copeland brings up a very good idea. lunch with mitt, we would have baloney sandwiches on day-old bread, yes mitt, this is what millions of americans eat daily. >> bill: whoa. >> i don't think they'll serve that at the white house but if you have an idea, tweet us at bpshow at bp show on twitter. we're taking your responses there. >> bill: we do know there will be no beer or wine consumed. >> at least not by romney. if i was obama, i would neat a shot or two before i go into that room to hang out with mitt
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romney. >> bill: all right. yes, indeed. so house republicans, this is the best they could do. 19 slots to fill. all 19 of them go to white males. rick out in madison wisconsin on 90.1. what do you say? >> caller: i think it's really appalling the republicans they can't each across the aisle but they can't reach within their own party even just two women. what do they need to do? put the names in a couple of binders to make it easier? >> bill: they need binders full of women. that's what john boehner should have said. bring us binders full of women. binders full of minorities. >> they still weren't good enough to do the job. maybe they were too good. >> bill: yeah. that might have been it. you know what? >> might have lost control. >> bill: might not have been willing to salute john boehner every time they turned around. absolutely. thanks rick.
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antelope texas. robert. what do you say? >> caller: good morning, bill. >> bill: yes sir. i say the g.o.p. is talking about reaching out to women and minority voters. when you put 19 white men in charge of your committees, when you vote against the dream act. when you vote against equal pay for women, that's not exactly reaching out. that's more -- that's not even a reach around. >> bill: no. >> caller: so -- they've gotta change themselves from the inside. don't be sexist. don't be racist. reaching out makes no difference if you don't follow through. >> bill: right. the question, robert, implicit in your comment which i certainly agree with is what did they learn on november 6th? they said -- they said they learned, they have to reach out. they have to be more inclusionary. obviously they didn't learn a damn thing. certainly some republicans i think did.
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but john boehner and eric cantor didn't. brandywine garden coming up next.
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>> announcer: this is the "full court press," the "bill press >> announcer: on your radio and on current tv, this is the "bill press show." >> bill: 33 minutes after the hour now. welcome back, everybody to the "full court press" this thursday morning. november 29. we're coming to you live from our nation's capital. brought to you today by the american federation of teachers. good men and women of the afc under president randy weingarten making a difference every day. you bet. you can check out more about
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their good work at aft.org. or better yet, you can ask her. president randy weingarten joining us in studio this morning. hi. nice to see you. >> it is great to see you. >> bill: we have the whole team here. >> we're here. >> bill: peter ogborn and dan henning. we've been talking a lot this morning about the fiscal cliff the impact on middle american families particularly. but there are a lot of people who are saying today well, let's teach the republicans a lesson. let's let them go over the cliff. why not. and then see what happens. does it make any sense to you? >> look. you know, i'm into actually solving things. not retribution. i'm a teacher. and what you do is you try to -- you try to educate people. you know. if you have to protest. if you have to activate. you do those things. but at the end of the day the american people actually said
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really clearly in the election by the polling data about congress and you see what they said -- what was litigated during the election. and what they said during the election. every single day. barack obama, joe biden the people running for senate said we have to have a balanced approach which means more revenues. they said that. it was pretty clear. and the american people voted for the president and the biggest popular vote that someone who has re-elected has ever gotten. bottom line is the republicans need to listen to that. i think some of them are starting to do that. so the pressure to actually try to solve this by december 31st is really important and really good and that solution has to be a balanced approach. but retribution it will mean -- i mean if we have to go over the cliff, we go over the cliff. but at the end of the day that's going to hurt middle-class families. because what expires as well on december 31st is not just the
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tax cuts of the rich's 2% but all of the middle class tax cuts. what also happens on december 31st is automatic cuts to domestic programs like head start, like title one and what that means is that kids will have a double whammy against them 100,000 kids will lose their head start slots, their early childhood slots. thousands of kids will lose medical services because community health centers will be closed. and these cuts come midyear so for school person, midyear cuts have double impact because you have to actually save the money for half a year instead of for a full year. so the cuts would be bad. it would put us, economists say right back in recession. so we should try to avoid the fiscal cliff. at the same time we need the revenues. and if the republicans try to be
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as on stinnett a and try to -- obstinate and try to hold them hostage, we still have to stay firm. >> bill: it is interesting the impact you talked about to real people, real programs, head start, pell grants or whatever, nobody's talking about those. people don't kind of zero down into exactly what it would mean to every middle class family. i was at the white house yesterday. the president did talk about this. look, the senate's already passed a bill to give 98% of americans a tax break. it is in the house. house democrats will vote for it. probably enough house republicans would vote for it if they they would only schedule it for a vote. >> the senate passed the bill. the people of the united states of america say we have to have a balanced approach. >> bill: yeah. >> it is now only one house and
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one party of one house that has to say yes. that's all they have to do is say yes. and that will be the first piece of probably a lot of other things that then have to happen. because if we have revenues, then we avoid this sequestration. we need -- look, the senate and the house the president came up with a trillion dollars of cuts already. this is not -- this keeping the tax cuts for the middle class basically keeping it for 98% of the folks that got them means that we still would get about a trillion dollars of revenue. and so we need that balanced approach. the middle class has taken it on the chin for the last several years. you're starting to see some -- you're starting to see some green spouts of the economy growing. so it is important to try to get to a deal but not at all costs. after watching what happened with the debt deal a few years
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ago, that's the wrong approach. the republicans should roll up their sleeves and get in there and try to make a deal as opposed to simply having this happen. >> bill: you pointed out earlier some republicans seem to say -- pardon me, are beginning to see the light. tom cole who is leading republican, part of the leadership, came out in the caucus the other day and said look guys, this is a no-brainer. late just vote for this 98%. get that out of the way. let us go on record on behalf of 98% of americans and take some credit for it because it wouldn't have happened without us. and then deal with these other issues. and yet speaker boehner yesterday, headline of this morning's -- boehner yesterday threw tom cole under the bus and said no, no, no, we won't vote for the 98% unless we get the
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continued tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of americans. how can we persuade them, as you just pointed out the american people, this is not the direction the american people voted to go in on november 6th. >> so this is -- i don't get speaker boehner. i mean -- there's a lot of republicans i do get. but i don't get the speaker of the house. because at the end of the day are you for the middle class and a balanced approach or not? and what the speaker is essentially saying is that the republican party or the leadership of the republican party is going to immunize the rich at all costs. now, at the end of the day i don't begrudge the rich but if you look at what has happened, the dynamics of this economy in the last ten years we have the biggest gap in income that we've ever had. the rich have done okay. everybody else hasn't. >> bill: bad times but they've still done okay.
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>> let's just balance the approach. what are we talking about? going back to the clinton tax rates? so i make over $250,000. i should be paying more federal taxes. but the bottom line is we need to help the middle class. this point in time, as we're starting to get out of the recession, middle class took it on the chin. need to help them. we also need to ensure that these domestic programs that would get an across-the-board cut need to be preserved. medicaid needs to be preserved. social security -- i don't consider these -- i think we've used the wrong word. these are not entitlements. social security is earned after a life of work. medicare is earned after a life of work. medicaid is an absolutely essential program not just anchoring obamacare but essential if we actually want to help kids and those who need it.
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have preventive healthcare. as opposed to having thousands and thousands of people in emergency rooms. >> bill: we've seen -- i hate that phrase, too. i was going to ask about that. glad you brought it up. this phrase entitlement reform because every time you hear the republicans say we'll accept new revenue as long as democrats are ready to deal with entitlement reform. by entitlement reform, we know what they mean. >> these are the same republicans who, by the way said during the election, to seniors, we're not cutting medicare. but at the end of the day, you need a balanced approach. but a balanced approach means to not go after that which has been cut and cut and cut where kids are being hurt, class sizes across the country are already 30 40 kids. and we need to make sure we keep -- we preserve our future. >> bill: i want to come back to -- i mean you have a
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well-deserved reputation. teachers are among the most effective political activists i think on the planet. thanks to you and nea and other organizations, teachers are always out there and so you know how to get things done politically. what's got to happen among the american people to get this congress to act? what do you think? has it got to be a ground swell of pressure on the congress? >> well, i think there has to be a ground swell of pressure on the congress. i think what's happened, first off, teachers are effective in the political space because remember, public education is a foundation of democracy. and teachers and educators understand that without public education, we don't have a democracy and that is an effective spillover in terms of the political space because we're teaching about it. people then go out and vote. so you know, we may mobilize and lobby but i really want to give -- our best resource is our members themselves. and what -- so first is an
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education campaign which actually has happened already. someone was telling me, i think it was the vice president was saying that several months ago no one knew what the fiscal cliff is. now in a recent poll, over 75% understand that something bad happens december 31st. the bush tax cuts expire. all of them. middle class and the wealthy tax cuts and also all of the sequestration meaning all of these automatic cuts to the military and to the domestic programs. people understand that that is a date where a lot of consequential things happen. so the next thing is republicans basically the republicans are the only ones who are saying i am not giving up the rich. they are going to be immunized in this. that's wrong and that's what has to be the first thought. everyone has to be in this. there has to be a balanced approach. so we are actually bringing people in the next couple of weeks from all over the country
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to lobby in washington. people have been sending a lot of letters to their congressional -- >> bill: more about that and how that might fit with the president's campaign of hash tag my2k whin we come back here on the "full court press" this thursday morning with randi weingarten, president of the american federation of teachers. >> announcer: this is the "bill press show." that i'm going to be the first one to call them out. they can question whether i'm right, but i think that the audience gets that this guy, to the best of his ability, is trying to look out for us.
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we have a big, big hour and the i.q. will go way up. how are you ever going to solve the problem if you don't look at all of the pieces? >>tv and radio talk show host stephanie miller rounds out current's morning news block. >>you're welcome current tv audience for the visual candy.
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>>sharp tongue, quick whit and above all, politically direct. >>you just think there is no low they won't go to. oh, no. if al gore's watching today... >> announcer: on your radio and on current tv, this is the "bill press show." >> bill: all right. 12 minutes before the top of the hour. on thursday, i know is thursday, november 29. president of the american federation of teachers, randi
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weingarten in studio with us. we're talking about the real impacts of the fiscal cliff particularly on education programs and on middle-class families. and the president launching this political campaign yesterday to get people to use twitter and tell members of congress what that $2,000 would mean to you and the twitter tag is hash tag my2k. peter, some comments before we get back to taking calls. >> taking comments all morning. tweeting at bpshow at bpshow. tweet to us. with the hash tag. my2k. we're retweeting all of those that you send us to. joe says $2,000 per year is gas in my car and clothes on my daughter's back. james reyes says this means paying down principle on my student loans. and sean buckley has an interesting idea. if you were speaker boehner who is standing in the way here, my 2k in taxes means i won't be able to afford cigarettes, merlot and tanning cream.
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which i think is a low number considering how much he spends on those products a year. we're tweeting at bpshow. send us your comments. >> bill: this is real money for real people. >> $2,000 a real money. $2,000 is -- when you think about what has gone on in the economy, i mean i look at it from you know, just -- my father. my father is a senior citizen. mid-80s. he lives on a fixed income. and you know, i thought this week when he dropped his phone his cell phone like lots of people do, the cell phone doesn't work. over the thanksgiving holiday, i go with him to get another cell phone. he needs a cell phone. it is vital for him. and he sees -- i see his face when the really nice storeperson from verizon says $250. and i immediately say dad i'm
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paying for it. don't worry. you need your cell phone. so when you think about -- that's just -- that is an expense that -- he didn't think he was going to have. yes, he dropped it. it got water in it. you think about gas prices. $4 $3.50 people need to go to work. you think about clothes. you think about books that kids need go to school. so $2,000 is a lot of money! >> bill: you said you're bringing your members organizing campaign here directed at the congress and you've been spending a lot of time on the hill the last few days. what kind of reaction? >> i feel like i've been living on the hill the last three days and our members are coming in a couple of weeks and there were a whole bunch of member bees from other unions that were here this week as well. it is real people talking to their legislative representatives about the impacts. so you know, and i think that there is nothing that is better
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than having your constituents talking to you about what the impact is. >> bill: that's what it is all about. do we have time to get this done? >> again it is one vote in the house of representatives. the bill, you know, the bill, the senate passed a bill that said for the middle class tax cuts. it is on the house desk. >> bill: the president yesterday said i'm ready to sign it. quickly, let's get tony involved here. tony is calling from chicago. good morning. >> caller: good morning. i think the two-prong approach is a great strategy. in other words focus on eliminating the tax breaks for the top 2% and just partition that off. and then we need to change the conversation from the social safety net to perhaps pentagon spending. i'm looking at a graph that shows pentagon-related spending to be 60% of the budget.
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we need to change the focus away from the social safety net. all of the money goes back into the economy and perhaps some of the fat cats in virginia and other places that make lots and lots of money on defense spending. >> bill: got it, tony. >> tony, i just saw a graph. that senator manchin showed me yesterday. that showed that the troops -- we've actually -- we actually have the same number of troops we've had in the last few years. the huge increase in pentagon spending is consultants and is outside contractors. and even he was saying wait a second, we have to actually look at this. we have to look -- that's why the balance issue becomes so important. so instead of saying on the education spending, i can tell you what that money goes for. that money goes for head start slots. that money goes for making sure that in the kids who have gotten
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the worst end of the stick in the recession they get -- federal money for that. so a balanced approach is really important. >> bill: it has to be that way. it is only going to happen if the american people get involved and that is when they get involved. a lot of it is thanks to your good leadership. your good work. you and other strong union leaders around the country. thanks for coming in. >> thank you bill. thank you for always being out there planting the flag on justice. >> bill: we're a team. randi weingarten, president of the atc. i'll be back with a quick parting shot. >> announcer: this is the "bill press show." just use your citi card and register your purchase online. have a super sparkly day! ok. [ male announcer ] now all you need is a magic carriage. citi price rewind. buy now. save later.
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>> >> announcer: the parting shot with bill press. this is the "bill press show." >> bill: all right. on this thursday, november 29, a very quick parting shot. there is -- it is not just a fiscal cliff. there is another big issue facing this administration and that is pot. the question i raised to jay carney at the white house briefing yesterday is now that voters in colorado and washington state have legalized the recreational use of marijuana, is the federal government the obama administration going to respect that or continue to enforce the federal law? carney wouldn't answer the question. all he said was it's up to the department of justice and by the way, congress has to change the law. which is a total cop-out. if anybody ought to know, barack obama ought to know. he smoked pot during college. he admitted that. he ought to know that potheads can really be outstanding responsible citizens of this country.
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one of them -- even one became president of the united states for two terms. see you tomorrow.
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